Artisan Bistro meal (Lafayette CA)

Went to Artisan Bistro with high expectations as the Chef (John Marquez) has quite a pedigree. Overall on the food side of things we were not disappointed. We started off with a 1/4 bottle of Gosset Champagne which is closed with a screwcap (I had never seen a screwcapped Champagne). The Champagne was lively and fresh. My wife had the Frisse Salad which was good but a bit overdressed. I had the Salmon Tartare which was quite good. None of the items overwelmed any of the other and everything came together quite well. For our mains my wife had the Pan Roasted Duck Breast (we brought a bottle of 1999 Red Burgundy which went quite well with the duck) which was quite tasty and perfectly cooked. I had the Herb Crusted Rack of Lamb (Medium Rare) which was perfectly done, seared on the outside and nice and pink on the inside. We also got an order

Now to back up a bit, when we entered the restaurant we noticed that the noise level was quite high. As our meal went on the noise got worse and in fact by the end of the meal the noise level was painful.

So the server comes to take our desert order and misunderstands my wife who wanted an explanation about the deserts and the server thought she said "no thanks" about wether to order desert (she had wanted to the goat cheese torte but waned some information about it first).

Overall the food is very good. However the noise level is intolerable and we can't go back until the dinning room is fixed so the noise level is not so high.

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